Customer Reviews

Rolling Hot: Hammers Slammers #4

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I absolutely love David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series. It is military sci-fi with an edge so sharp no other writer comes close. With Rolling Hot, Drake almost outdoes even himself. It's the story of an ad-hoc unit of tankers and APCs that must make an epic cross-country journey to relieve their employer's besieged capital. The problem is, the Slammers troopers are in rest-and-refit for a reason; they're all either Section-8 material, green troops, or just plain used up.

As always, it's the characters that draw you into Drake's portayals of soldiers under fire. We follow events from the strangely detached POV of Captain Ranson, who must coldly proceed with her mission at all costs. A civilian reporter along for the ride provides the experience of a man who is at first ignorant of what war really is. By the end of the story, he's as hard-bitten as any Slammer. Equally gripping are the sub-plots incolving a new tank crew, a shell shocked veteran, and two maintenance workers pressed into service as tank crewmen.

The action starts up and doesn't stop til the very last page. I love Drake's ironic endings. The ending of Rolling Hot is bitter, but leaves you with a real sense of the futility of war.

It's been a long time since David Drake did any stories of Hammer's Slammers. I wish he'd write some more!

This is, in many ways, the best that David Drake has given us yet.

In a war not unlike the one in which Drake and i found ourselves a while back, an ad-hoc unit of odds and sods finds itself rolling hot to try to relieve their employer's provincial capital.

While these are members of Hammer's Slammers, the deadliest mercenary unit going, they are hardly the Slammers' finest, ranging from maintenance personnel pressed into service as the crew of a patched-up tank to their CO, Capt. Peggie Ranson, who is just this side of a Section 8, and a civilian reporter, who accidentally winds up along for the ride, who furnishes a viewpoint for the reader.

It is this viewpoint (one of several from which Drake tells the story) that makes this book, in my opinion, about Drake's best -- by giving us someone a lot like ourselves, putting us inside his head then and putting him through an accelerated version of the hardening process that produces a professional soldier from a raw replacement, Drake shows us even more starkly than usual, that war is, indeed hell. And why.

Drake is not going to let us get away from war without rubbing our noses in it; he wants the reader to see soldiers as *people*, not expendables, like bullets. He wants to show people who haven't Seen The Elephant what war is, and to -- just maybe -- convince a few of us that War Is Not A Good Thing.

Reading this book can be harrowing, as you watch men and women who are at least recogniseable and often sympathetic characters kill and die. If you can read it, watch those characters fighting and dieing, and not find yourself in some sort of emotional state as you read Chapter 13, which is a slightly-less-formal version of a military arrival report of Task Force Ranson's arrival in the capital, listing the few remaining vehicles and personnel that they rolled with, then you have Not Been Listening.

"...still i wonder why -- the worst of men must fight and the best of men must die..."

One of the absolutely most revealing looks at the military mind and what the military actually *DOES* that i have ever read.

This is the first David Drake books that I ever read, and it was absolutely devastating, turning me into a devoted fan. Drake gives an absolutely heartbreaking look at war by showing a futuristic conflict through the eyes of a young journalist who has been dragooned into the elite mercenary unit Hammer's Slammers, letting the audience learn as he does. The book is filled with intense action and compelling characters, and creates one of the most moving works of fiction I have read in some time. Essential for any fan of military science fiction.

I happened to read this Drake novel as part of the new three-volume "Hammer's Slammers" collection. I am ordering a ppbk copy to mail to my son. This is a winner.

Drake writes a terse, graphic account of a "suicide mission" and the poor sods who are tasked to complete it.

The point-of-view is that of the combat trooper, with his butt hung out to enemy fire and his thumbs on the triggers of his tri-barrel.

The story seems grim, and echoes Vietnam, with the morale problems and frequent use of drugs to get men through 48 hours without sleep, and through their sweaty, palpable fear.

Almost inadvertently, I got to know the troopers in those "blowers," and I actually had tears in my eyes at the end of the novel. Drake sneaks up on you -- you do not appreciate the degree to which he gets you drawn in, and gets you involved.

As happens so often in combat, the wrong guys get the credit, and the poor wogs who get their tails shot off are criticized as slackers and screw-ups. But the old sarge tells the recruit, "don't worry sonny. We don't care who gets the credit. We just care if COL Hammer gets his planetary payments on time." (Paraphrase) These are mercenaries, after all.

One h___ of a read. Give it a whirl.

Tightly written, no padding, no baloney. Right on the point, from the first word to the last.

Reprinted as "The Tank Lords" (see there) with a few extra bits thrown in. Reads easily, although I cannot help wondering how the regiment manages to survive, losing troops and material at such a prodiguous rate.